


Efflorescence

by Fluffifullness



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Amputation, Caretaking, Chapter 49, Chapter Related, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi glared down at Erwin in a manner that thoroughly conveyed both apathy and anger – in equal parts, of course, and it was always that way with Levi: that unwelcoming neatness, an odd sort of symmetry that penetrated all the way through to his emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Efflorescence

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially just a scene that I can imagine following certain events in chapter 49 of the manga. If you haven't read that far yet and don't want to be spoiled (assuming that you haven't been already), I'd strongly suggest turning back now. Otherwise, by all means - read on! :)

“What’s all this?”

“Bandages,” Levi stated, narrowing his eyes even as he set the little box down on the table beside Erwin’s bed. There wasn’t a lot else there, but that was only because Levi had successfully managed to scare off any potential visitors – always saying things like ‘don’t you have something you should be doing?’ or ‘he’s sleeping’ – so the only thing there was the small bundle of flowers brought earlier by Hanji.

Or maybe by Eren and his friends, another acquaintance of Erwin’s or a different officer of the legion – he really couldn’t be sure.

He’d been sleeping off the initial pain at the time of the visit, after all, so he'd had to ask Levi about the flowers when he noticed them – which of course meant that, failing to hear his muttered explanation the first time it was delivered, Erwin had to satisfy himself with looking and wondering. The shorter man had been too busy criticizing Erwin himself to repeat anything "as pointless as all that." He'd been rambling on for a while, actually – something about wasting space, reaping what you sow – well, in all, it could basically be concluded that his recent interactions with the lance corporal had been anything but cordial.

And, of course, he still didn’t know where the sky-blue flowers on his bedside table had come from.

“So?”

Levi glared down at Erwin in a manner that thoroughly conveyed both apathy and anger – in equal parts, of course, and it was always that way with Levi: that unwelcoming neatness, an odd sort of symmetry that penetrated all the way through to his emotions.

Not sure whether or not he could expect an answer in any reasonable amount of time, Erwin finally just smiled lazily and sat upright to grant the shorter man access to what little remained of his right arm. It didn’t hurt much anymore, not really, and the pain he’d felt outside the walls had been negligible in the face of adrenaline and the immensity of their mission.

All things considered, he really should have been grateful – at the very least, to good luck for the simple fact of being alive.

“You better not’ve slacked off,” Levi all but hissed under his breath, quick and sudden and his hands were already on Erwin – tickling the too-warm skin just above his bandages, tugging at the loose end when he found it and frowning just a bit more deeply when he saw blood.

Erwin laughed, wordless, and Levi finished winding the bandages down and away from the wound without any additional comments of his own. They both knew the answer to that question, after all, and it was likely that Levi hadn’t even needed to ask around to hear about it. The stories were – well, maybe it would have been hard to exaggerate everything that’d happened, but Erwin still wasn’t himself convinced of the accuracy of anything that pertained specifically to him. The rumors made him a hero, made him stronger than he was always sure he could be, but he understood as well as Levi that his usefulness in a fight had been effectively halved by the loss of his arm.

That was true, and yet there was… right, there was a bit more to it than that.

“When are you planning on practicing?” Levi wondered, then, and Erwin noticed that he was busying himself now with a bowl of hot water – steam billowing up from it in tiny waves, surface still moving enough to indicate that it’d just been moved, though from where Erwin couldn’t have said – and a medicinal patch and towel.

How like Levi, Erwin mused, to worry so diligently about the potential for infection.

“As soon as it’s no longer extremely reckless to do so,” he decided, following up on his unvoiced aside with a conclusion reached in the same thread of thought. “But if the situation calls for it, I’ll gladly go out and fight.”

Levi shook his head. “They’re better off if you stay here.”

“Do I really need to remind you,” Erwin sighed, “that I’m not needed solely for what I have to offer physically?”

“You’ll die without that,” Levi huffed, and then he added, “Even if you _can_ still fight a little.”

Ah, so _that_ was part of it.

Erwin’s faint smile widened into an expression that was half-smirk, half-sympathy, and with his left arm he reached up to smooth his hair abstractedly back from his eyes. He spoke as he moved, let Levi’s gaze follow the shift of his weight on the bed and the healthy energy still pulsing just beneath his skin.

“Then maybe you should focus on recovering, yourself. I’ll be relying even more on your strength from now on.”

Levi’s breath caught, then, and his gaze dropped from Erwin’s face to the towel and from there to his own legs. He looked like he was caught somewhere between outrage and satisfaction, maybe concern or even fear – but that was before he glanced back up and finished wringing stray droplets of water from the cloth in his hands. Returning to work lightly at the broken regions of Erwin’s stump, he let his expression naturally shift back to the flat mask of irritation that was so characteristic of him these days.

It might have been a touch more exaggerated, then, but there were plenty of possible reasons for that.

“Worry about yourself.”

“Have you?” Erwin wondered.

The lance corporal sighed as he retrieved his towel, rinsed it and then brought it back down on Erwin’s arm. He let the heat dampen uninjured skin and only gradually lowered it to again dab at the wound – and even then he did it lightly and carefully enough that it hardly worsened the pain. There was no way his efforts could possibly have broken the scab that was beginning to heal over what had been little more than a bloody mess before.

“About you,” Levi murmured, and he raised his eyes to stare coolly into Erwin’s, “or are you seriously trying to make this a problem that concerns me?”

“Don’t disregard your own health because you’re upset on my behalf,” Erwin stated, firmly despite the slow sweep of tiredness that was getting ready to pull him back below the fine line of total alertness. “That’s an order.”

“I just said, this isn’t about me –”

“You,” Erwin fought back, volume shooting up until he was almost shouting at Levi from mere inches away, “are my right arm now. I won’t order you into that, Levi, but I honestly hope that you understand what it means.”

Mine – his – right arm.

Normally, Erwin would have expected a taunting reply, something along the lines of ‘been a while since I last heard anything that trite’ or ‘do clichés like that usually work for you?’ – but that was under the usual circumstances, the ones that were supposed to find Levi walking without the help of crutches and Erwin powering his way through sacrifice and tactics with his own body struggling wholly intact.

Those were the circumstances under which most of humanity probably would have preferred to find itself, and suffice it to say that Erwin felt the same. He didn’t doubt that Levi did, as well.

“Erwin,” Levi started, but this time he wound up frozen with a clean roll of bandages gripped tightly in his fist. His eyes were wide, his mouth open and then just his teeth showing as he ground them together and stared down – at nothing, it seemed.

“It’ll be okay,” Erwin sighed. “I –”

“—trust you,” Levi finished for him, and with a shuddery exhalation he finished tightening the clean bandages about Erwin’s upper arm and the awkward cliff – healing skin and bone, the conspicuous blank space where there should have been something but wasn’t.

Erwin regretted it for tactical reasons only; neither of them had time to truly mourn the loss for what it was. _No one_ had the time for things like that, not if they had their priorities straight.

Levi stood, stumbled briefly under the burden of his own weight and the pain in his leg but quickly managed to right himself with a loud curse and the harsh scrape of wood on wood. Erwin watched without comment, and as he watched he tested the feel of his right side – lifted the stump, breathed deep and let it throb until the throbbing died down to nothing.

It took him a moment to realize that Levi was watching him, too, and then another to see that there was something else in his hands – not bandages, not disinfectant or the water or anything else he’d brought with him but another handful of sky-blue flowers.

These ones were fresher, brighter, carefully collected symmetrical with a small note attached to the green flush at their base.

From a relatively short distance, Erwin could still make out the words:

_We won’t let it go to waste._

“Just don’t take too long,” Levi warned, and then he left the way he’d come.


End file.
